Huntsville Hospital wants to turn this area along Governors Drive, between Madison and Franklin streets, into a tree-lined park for patients, visitors and employees. The concrete pad in the middle of the picture is the old Wilson's Cleaners site. (Steve Doyle | sdoyle@al.com)

At a city subdivision committee meeting this morning, hospital officials unveiled plans for a tree-lined park running alongside Governors Drive between Madison and Franklin streets.

Mathis Sneed, a landscape architect with the hospital, told committee members that the park is intended to turn an unsightly construction zone near the tram tracks into a pretty place for hospital patients, employees and visitors to reflect.

"One thing we do not have for our patients and visitors is an open space to get away from whatever they're dealing with," said Sneed.

The roughly three-acre park will start outside the hospital's Plaza Resource Center and continue east past The Heart Center, taking in the old Wilson's Cleaners site. A small surface parking lot outside Plaza Resource Center will eventually be ripped up, said Sneed.

For now, the not-for-profit hospital is seeking the city's permission to clean and level the property and plant as many as 17 large oak and sequoia trees. The Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on the park plan at its next meeting, Nov. 20 at 5 p.m.

Sneed said future phases will include heavy landscaping, an elevated stage for small presentations, park benches, possibly water features and a curving stone wall along Governors Drive.

"We want to try to buffer that sound" from passing vehicles, he said. "Sixty thousand cars a day makes a lot of noise."

It will take several million dollars -- and probably more than five years -- to fully develop the park, said Sneed.

Subdivision committee member Kelly Schrimsher, who is also Mayor Tommy Battle's communications director, said a park along congested Governors Drive fits the mayor's vision for more green spaces.